as resolved to defend him, and
to cross me. For myself, I told her I had no joy to be in any place, but
was loth to be near about her, when I knew my affection so much thrown
down, and such a wretch as Ralegh highly esteemed of her.' When he
called Ralegh a wretch the Queen expressed her disgust at the
impertinence by turning away to Lady Warwick, and closed the interview.

[Sidenote: _Ralegh's Decline._]

Essex spoke, and perhaps thought, thus of Ralegh in 1587. So the nation
at large spoke and thought of him then, and for many years afterwards.
If he had only been such as he had as yet shown himself, posterity might
have found it difficult to prove the condemnation unjust. He had risen
in virtue of a handsome person and a courtly wit. He had equipped
expeditions of discovery, in which he took no share of the perils, and
the whole of the glory. He had fought and spoiled the Spaniards, chiefly
by deputy, risking his own person as little as 'the noble warrior' of
his reputed epigram, 'that never blunted sword.' The hardships and
dangers he had sturdily braved in France and Ireland were for his
contemporaries simple myths, as they would have been for us, had he died
at thirty-five. Had he retained the Queen's favour uninterrupted, had
she not been capricious, had there been no Essex, had there been no
Elizabeth Throckmorton, he might have died at sixty, at seventy, or at
eighty, and a verdict hardly less severe been pronounced. It is not
certain. Possibly in any event, the vigour inherent in the man, his
curiosity, his instinct for stamping his will on the world outside, his
eagerness to impel his nation to empire westwards, might have had their
way. They might have mastered the contradictory ambition to be
victorious in a contest of factions. While he was still absorbed in
Court strifes, and in the seductive labour of building up a fortune, he
had proved that he was no mere carpet knight. But it was well that his
natural tendencies towards a life of action were braced by the
experience of a chill in the ardour of royal benevolence. From 1587, as
the star of Essex rose, and his was supposed to be waning, his orbit can
be seen widening. It became more independent. As reigning favourite he
had vicariously explored, colonized, plundered, and fought. Henceforth
he was to do a substantial part of his own work.

[Sidenote: _Antedated._]

Essex, at the period of the North Hall scene, was new to the Court. He
must soon have d